


Return

by ClockworkJamboree



Category: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hello!! i haven't written fic in years I'm just here to have fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24821446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkJamboree/pseuds/ClockworkJamboree
Summary: 10 years have passed since the Vegnagun incident. For a time, everything was peaceful. Yuna indulged in the sphere hunting craze, and to her surprise, Tidus returned. Time passed. More of the dead returned and time continued passing, things were spiralling out of control and joy was turning to confusion. Eventually, Sin returned. Confusion turned to mass panic and anger, with people demanding answers from Yuna, who, as a uniter of the people, was soon appointed head of the Spiran Alliance, a coalition of Yevon and the Youth League. Her fight is going strong until one day, on a run of the mill sphere hunt at Baaj, the latest person to be revived is discovered: Seymour Guado.
Relationships: Lulu/Wakka (Final Fantasy X & X-2), Paine/Rikku (Final Fantasy X & X-2), Seymour Guado/Yuna, tidus/yuna (mentions of)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! As you read, I don't write a lot of fanfiction anymore, so this is purely for funsies for me! But I'm also taking it very seriously! I wanted to take a world and a lot of questions I had, and a ship I liked (but was wildly... Bad, in terms of power imbalance), and approach it with everything I know now. So basically I'm trying to write something I want, while making it really less terrible in terms of power balance, and exploring a lot of interesting points about the world. I dunno if that's your thing or not!

Baaj was, as ever, a familiar location, and yet shrouded in mystery. Seymour had never expected to return here, partly because he had bid it farewell with no intent to return, and partly because, as far as he could recall, he should have been well and truly dead. And yet, here he was, seated on the cold stone floor by a roaring fire that had taken a frustrating amount of time to start.

His mother had told him, long ago, that Baaj used to be a city, floating in the ocean. When he was younger, he had explored every last section of the ruins that, to the ‘civilized folk’, were considered uninteresting or off limits. Even as an adult, redirecting any resources to take a personal trip to Baaj would require weeks of checking in with Yevon’s internal travel management branch. Maester’s were needed in a lot of places, and it took a lot of work to get them there, so traveling to deserted island ruins with no cultural significance that were ready to collapse at any minute were rather quickly put in the ‘unimportant’ category. It was part of why he’d decided to stop returning after a time.

He had spent years here. Learning the ins and outs. The hidden crevices, trying to piece together the history of the place. If he hadn’t, he would have gone mad. He chuckled to himself at that. Perhaps he already had. More than likely, he already had.

Baaj had little to offer in the way of revealing its secrets, graffiti dotted walls here and there, the occasional sphere would offer some insight into lives of the past, from snapshots into home life, through to news reports. All of it meant very little to him, it was a thousand lifetimes away, and the bright lights and whirring machina of the period did nothing to entice him.

It was day six by the time he realised another presence had finally made its way to the ruins. He was surprised, to say the least, that anyone had come at all. He had even begun to wonder if this was some sort of personally crafted purgatory. It would have been fitting.

He sat patiently by his fire, legs crossed, nothing but tattered scraps of cloth to cover him, tied around his waist and what was left bundled into a makeshift nest. All his previous supplies, stashed away through his youth from Guado supply vessels, were well and truly perished or, strangely, looted. Perhaps Baaj had become something of a tourist hot spot in his absence. It would explain what appeared to be increased foot traffic along the various pathways, the odd tool left behind that wasn’t familiar to him.

Whatever the case may be, if someone was going to find him, he supposed there was very little he could do about it. Staying hidden on Baaj would have been easy for him. Live out the rest of his time eating fish, barely scraping by. He’d done it for ten years, it was second nature to him. But that would have been too easy. And it wouldn’t have made sense to him, with a strong urge to know what had happened, and why he was here.  
Though of course, the alternative was that whoever it was recognized him immediately and killed him without asking a single question. But, again, would that have been so bad? Another easy option. But he couldn’t fight back, and there was only one way off Baaj. That was by boat. And so, unfortunately, waiting to see who would enter the temple was his only course of action.

Seymour rose to his feet, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck raise. He hated not knowing, he hated not being in control. He hated Baaj. His fists clenched as he padded across the cold floor, barefoot, at least wanting to get into a better position for himself. Whoever it was (a woman, by the sounds, or two?) were in for a shock. A half naked, supposedly dead half-Guado former Maester of Yevon, but now, just a man.

The muffled voices slowly became clearer to him and he realised one of them struck him as familiar. A higher, bubbly voice. Whining, it sounded like. Another feminine voice, lower, speaking softer. Sterner. Not one that he could place immediately, which was odd for him. Even concerned him, momentarily, before realising there were bigger things to worry about.

“...I don’t know why she even makes us come back here so often! I know new spheres are starting to dry up, but Baaj? Really?”

“She says it’s one of the only places the Spiran Alliance doesn’t have any real records of yet. All anyone knows is that it was a city, on par with Zanarkand, and… Then it wasn’t.”

“Yeah but… It always gives me the creeps… At least the dig teams made an above water entrance so we don’t have to swim in every damn time!”

“Afraid of getting your hair wet?”

“Afraid of gettin’ eaten by something like, fifty times my size! Al Bhed aren’t natural swimmers!”

“Excuse me? You love the wat-- Rikku. Shh. Blades up.”

“Huh?”

Another quick ‘shh’ from the other woman and the voices stopped completely. Seymour’s fire had given away the fact that someone was here. Not that it mattered. When he heard the name ‘Rikku’ everything just flooded back, like a punch to the gut, and he also realised that for any of her guardians to be involved, to be the first ones that found him… Perhaps the great play was not yet over. Though, it could be, very quickly, given out of all possible members of her party, Rikku had been the ‘stab first, ask questions never’ kind of person.

“Show yourself. No teams are scheduled for Baaj. You’re not supposed to be here, and under Spiran Alliance law, I have full authority to- What the fuck.”

“Who is it, Paine- What the actual fuck!”  
The two women stood in front of him, Rikku, the one he remembered, had changed significantly. Taller, her long hair in braids, what wasn’t stuck out in ways that reminded him of a chocobo. Her clothes, a top that cut off at her midriff, shorts that were, in his opinion, barely actually shorts, and feathers, beads, draping cloth wrapping her up and making her look like something of a wild forest girl.

The other woman, taller, short silver hair done into a miniature ponytail, didn’t take her eyes off him. Her outfit, a leather jacket, leather paints, all studded with metal, seemed to be designed to intimidate on first glance. If that didn’t do the trick, the large blade she had pointed squarely at him would certainly do it.

Rikku’s gaze, however, kept darting back between Paine and Seymour, she seemed uncertain, but had drawn her weapons all the same. Twin blades, held tightly in her fists.

“Of all the… I was hoping it would never come to this. Of the multitudes of Farplane Chosen we’re getting, why him?”

There were now multiple questions being regularly added to Seymour’s ever growing list, at the top was, naturally, ‘why am I here’. Though, ‘who is that’, ‘what are Farplane Chosen’ and ‘what’s going on, just, generally’ were all now closely following it.

“Who cares! It means we get to kick his ass all over again! I’m not letting this creep outta here in one piece. Or. At all, honestly!” Rikku’s eyes were less uncertain and more fiery now, determined to cause him all kinds of unspeakable pain which would have been entirely justified, if undesired.

“You kill him, he’ll just come back again. You know how this works. Do you want him to get Pyresickness?

Another question. This was getting out of hand. Of all the results Seymour had expected, this certainly wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t stay silent any longer, which he was fairly sure he would regret.

“...I understand you are both filled with rage, but, might I ask… What, exactly, is going on?”

“No! You might not! You just… Shh!! Shut up! For like, five seconds!” Rikku snapped at him, despite his silence up until this point, and he decided that perhaps his silence would be the better option. The easier option, at least.

But, he’d already resolved not to make things easy for himself. Curiosity, as always, won out.

“I just want to understand why I seem to be… Well. Mortal, again. And perhaps, likewise, why you haven’t driven that rather large blade through my-”  
“I would love to. Believe me. But it’s not an option right now. And you don’t get any explanations, I don’t have the time, the patience, or, quite frankly, the desire to deal with you any more than absolutely necessary.”

Even that was generous, Paine thought, never once lowering her blade. Seymour simply sighed in response, looking mildly frustrated, more than anything. This was not the response Paine was used to receiving when she had her sword pointed at her foes, but then, this wasn’t a normal situation. It hadn’t been normal for ten years, since Vegnagun.

Since he came back. Since Sin came back. Since everyone started coming back. And now, this. Almost ten years to the day. Seymour Guado, murderer, disgusting creep, a slew of other descriptors she’d heard from all walks of life to describe this man, and now he was here, before them, none of them really seemed to do him justice.

He was just a tall, lanky man, like most Guado. A makeshift cloth robe covering him as best it could. He didn’t even have a weapon, and magic was no option right now. She and Rikku were in no danger. But she still refused to lower the blade.

“We… Should take him to Yuna.”

“Are you serious? Why can’t we just… Leave him here!”

“You know why. Other teams will come, if they find him, it will be a lot worse.”

Rikku gritted her teeth, groaned, sighed, looked as though she was about to retort with something before admitting defeat, shrugging her shoulders.

“Whatever!”

Seymour, meanwhile, had felt himself pale at the mention of her name. Perhaps this was a step too far. He couldn’t just let them keep talking like this, treating him as an object. He was naked, save for a cloth robe, but he still had his dignity.

“The two of you, I-”

That was as far as he got before Rikku through something, hitting him square in the side of the head, dropping to the ground and letting out a low hiss as some kind of smoke began seeping from it.

His nose, sensitive, could immediately tell what it was. Knock-out gas. An Al Bhed chemist concoction, a man-made equivalent to the humble Sleep spell. The gas, first popularized in certain hospitals in which some patients were less susceptible to magic than others… The mind is a strange thing, with the complete history of the humble sleep grenade flashing before his eyes as his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell face first, straight onto that cold stone he loathed so much.

The last thing he heard was Rikku, lowering her blades and stepping forward. “Oh, she’s gonna love this one.”

Then, once more, darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super bad at like, talking about anything I make. So just, I dunno. Vibe with it. Thanks.

He heard voices, muffled at first, but slowly becoming clearer as he regained consciousness. But he refused to open his eyes. He’d learned this trick years ago, it was easier to learn more if people thought you were unconscious. Really, it was their fault for having what sounded like such a… Heated discussion while in the same room as him in the first place. 

“...Right? Like, I’m not wrong in thinking this was inevitable. More and more people are getting revived every year. It’s out of control. Auron’s back. Tidus is back. Hell, Yunie, he was the one that started this mess. I mean, not, y’know, personally, but like. A sign?” Rikku shuffled her feet as she spoke, nervously. This whole situation made her uneasy, he supposed. The dead should stay dead, as far as she was concerned, isn’t that what she’d said to him once? 

Seymour wanted to groan, the things he recalled always struck like lightning from the depths of his mind, and usually it was beneficial. Usually. It was what made him so successful and so, so deeply furious.

“Who cares. Easy solution, we take his fucking… Bizarre antler-haired ass down to Bevelle, the very, very depths of Bevelle, lock him up, dispose of the key, and get back to our regular lives.”

The woman they referred to as Paine clearly had no time for any of this. No nonsense. Clear. He liked that. Perhaps she was the only one among them with any sense. Or the courage to speak it. 

“Regular lives? Really? I’d love to know what that looks like. Do you know what I was doing when you came to collect me? I had to file forms to begin the process of a Sending. The New Yevonite branch of the Spiran Alliance argues, yes. It’s necessary. We don’t know if the Sent Pyresick will stay sent or not. The Youth League branch argues it’s not worth the time. Meanwhile, the likelihood of more people dying and these poor people turning into… Not Fiends, just… Horrors, increases day by day. And I’m supposed to fill out a form while I watch this-”

“Yunie.”

“No, Rikku! I’m not going to just pretend I’m okay with--” 

“He’s awake.”

As hard as he’d tried to prevent it, it was the sharp intake of breath that had given him away. A sharp breath was taken as soon as she’d begun talking, and from that point, both Paine and Rikku’s eyes had been on him. Burning into him, to a point where he knew pretending would just be worse for him in the end. 

And now she, too, was staring at him. Through him, even. He took another breath and released it, slowly, through his nose as he sat up and opened his eyes. 

“Ah. Well. I had intended to comment sooner, I just felt it rude to interrupt.”

He was never one to be caught speechless for long. You don’t get far in politics being awkward, though most were quick to call it smugness. But after that, there was a silence even he couldn’t pierce. Nothing came to mind as the three women’s gaze bore into him, and he felt as though he would turn to stone at any moment. 

These weren’t girls. He remembered them as girls. Rikku, a young Al Bhed teenager. Plucky, almost comically so, but behind that girlish smile was a punch that was as hard as it was quick, backed by machina iron. A walking ball of nervous energy that exploded as an electric confidence. 

Paine was a newcomer to their group, but not to him. He recalled her records, an orphan, up and coming soldier in the Crimson Squad, but disobedient. Rowdy. Traitorous. It seemed only natural she’d wind up here. She stood tall next to Riku, arms bare, but covered in tattoos, crossed firmly.

Finally, there was her. Standing off to the other side of him, her gaze piercing far deeper into his soul. Where Paine and Rikku merely served to annoy him, Yuna froze him. Chilled him to the core and sucked the air from his naked body. 

All of them were no longer teenagers, and he was clearly at a disadvantage. Knowledge-wise, numbers, simply knowing he had been defeated… Several times. 

And so he held their gaze.

It carried on for what felt like an eternity before he felt the sharp interruption of Yuna’s fist connecting with his nose. Seymour reeled back, hands flying to his face, blood pouring from his now broken nose and over his fingers.   
He wanted to cry out. He wanted to swear. It would have been instinct for a lesser man, and yet, he sat, eyes narrowed, not dropping his gaze. 

“You. You don’t get to talk. At all. Talking is a privilege reserved for people who don’t commit genocide upon an entire race.” 

Her voice didn’t waver as she stood, finally breaking the uncomfortable moment to look back to Rikku and Paine. 

“We can’t just lock him up in Bevelle. Do you know what would happen if word got out he’d come back?” Yuna asked, having regained her composure. 

“All hell would break loose,” Paine replied, looking off to a now particularly interesting mark on the wall of what appeared to be a medical facility. 

He was laying naked on a bed, covered by sheets. Still confused. Still not in a position to ask questions. Increasingly frustrated.

“So what are we supposed to do? We can’t kill him, we definitely can’t keep him on board the Celsius, Brother and Barkeep would flip!” Rikku began waving her arms up and down to emphasise her point. 

“And if word got out to Guadosalam… Now that Jyscal’s back, tensions are already high. Things would tip into outright war.” Paine’s foot began to tap. Rikku’s hand moved to her shoulder, rubbing soothing motions. 

That was it. Seymour snapped, slamming his fist down on the metal table at his bedside, various instruments and pills clattering around. “What? My father? That’s it. Please. I understand everything I have done is… Well. Listen. I can offer an explanation, but not an excuse. If you will hear me out, and just tell me if I’m… Unsent? No, this is… Different. I feel myself.”

“You want me to knock him out?” Rikku glared at him, raising her fists and moving to strike at a moment’s notice before Yuna leaned forward and blocked her. 

“No. No. There’s… Only one solution.”

“Yuna, no.”

“Yunie no-Wait what? Yunie no what? What is she doing?”

“It’s fine, Paine.”

“It’s fucking stupid. You know it’s stupid. You can barely juggle your duties as head of the Spiran Alliance.”

“Exactly.”

A moment of silence. Brief.

Rikku scrunched her nose up, the soothing hand rubbing Paine’s arm had turned into a full cling. “Oh… Oh no, holy shit I got it. You’re gonna go… Incognito…” She said it with a wink and a giggle.

Paine didn’t move. “Absolutely fucking not. I don’t care how overworked you are. This isn’t a spa vacation.”

“C’mon, he makes one wrong move, I cast stop, maybe a few other nasty spells on top, it’s fine!”

“That’s if you can cast anything. I know you can overpower him but this is Seymour Guado. You… Know this man, right? You met this man? You told me what he did to you, in detail?”

“I’ll be fine, Paine.”

Paine threw her arms up in defeat, turning around and storming out of the room, seemingly uncaring what happened beyond that point. Rikku bit her lip, looking from Yuna to the door to giving Seymour a rather nasty glare before back to Yuna.

“...I know you’ll be fine, but Paine worries. I mean we’d babysit him too, but… You promised, even another Vegnagun mushed together with Sin doubling in size wouldn’t stop anything from us having some time together after the wedding, y’know?”

Yuna shook her head. “I didn’t expect help. This is… Not something I could ever ask for help with.” Her voice was firm, her resolution solid, her will… Resolute. What he remembered her for. 

Rikku took a deep breath and then nodded, slowly edging toward the door. “I know you’ll be fine so… I’m gonna… Leave you with him. And. Check on the whole, you know, wife thing,” she said, now just a head poking back through the door before offering a quick wave and disappearing. 

Now it was the two of them and he realised just how vulnerable he was laying naked on a bed in nothing but a sheet, blood still streaming down his face and onto the pure white of the fabric. He was at a… Disadvantage. 

“So, now what?” he asked, softly.

“I’m going to tell you whatever you want to know.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha hello. Hi. I promise I'm still thinking about this and intend to finish it, I just do 500000 other things and find it super difficult to sit down and write stuff. Anyway. Hope you enjoy. :)

Seymour was still disoriented. He didn’t even know where to begin. His head was throbbing, though his nose had at least stopped bleeding, and he was still naked. There really wasn’t a worse position for him to be in. 

“Well,” he began, “I… Would like to start by requesting some clothes. If that is not too much to ask.”

Yuna looked him up and down. Quickly. Judgmentally. Though her features soon softened, realizing despite the situation, there was little either of them could do about it. Why make things more difficult than they needed to be? 

“Of course. Let me find something… Suitable. I trust you won’t try anything while I’m gone?”

Despite himself, Seymour gave a soft laugh and shook his head, holding up a still restrained wrist. “Of course not. I can sense magic has grown thin, and without it… Well. I’m at quite the disadvantage.” 

She hesitated momentarily before leaving the room, and he felt as though he could finally breathe. Though the air was heavy. The scent of the Farplane lingered, even here, and he knew something was seriously wrong. His mind raced as he tried to figure out the cause. To put everything within some kind of context, but he continuously came up empty. 

Even with all his knowledge, and the information he had access to as a Maester… How had things changed so much? What was happening now? Why was it happening to him?

Yuna returned faster than expected, barely leaving him time alone with his thoughts, throwing a bundle of clothes onto his lap. “Here. It’s Al Bhed fashion, I suppose still heretical to you, but then, Yevon was never something you really cared about, was it?”

There was still venom in her voice. Understandable, naturally, but still somehow disappointing to him. “These will suffice, I’m sure.” His voice was still soft, measured, careful, as he turned the clothes over in his hands. 

Deep reds and blues seemed to be the theme, a short sleeved top that was either meant for someone smaller than him, or perhaps crop tops for men had become a fashion statement? There was a long, coat-like vest to wear over the top, a sturdy pair of boots, and blue fatigues lined with strapping that, again, he wasn’t sure was just for fashion or if it served some kind of purpose.

“Well?” Yuna was growing impatient, and Seymour glanced up at her. 

“You… Expect me to get changed now? Here? Might I ask you to at least turn around?” 

In her haste, and her anger, she hadn’t stopped to think about her being alone with a grown, fully naked man. For the first time, she looked as though she had been completely caught off guard. 

“O-Oh! Oh. Yes. Well. Ah. Here, let me loosen your restraints first. I can imagine that would make things easier.” She stepped forward and, touching him as little as possible, removed the ties that held his wrists to the sides of the bed. The black leather of the cuffs had left large red marks, and Seymour rubbed them tenderly.

He said a soft ‘thank you’ and Yuna seemed to just barely acknowledge it as she stepped back again, turning away. 

“Just hurry it up. Then we can talk.”

He quickly removed the sheets and got dressed, finding the clothes a comfortable fit. Which, he realised, meant that most of the bizarre choices were indeed likely a fashion trend. He shuddered at the thought. Though his own outfit had been called eccentric many times, it was at least traditional. But what is tradition without a little flair? 

“Alright. You may turn around now, Lady Yuna.”

Even saying her name again felt… Strange. Painful. And as soon as it left his lips he could see her shudder, if only slightly, if only for a moment. Disgust. 

“Just Yuna. Please.” She was still polite, perhaps to a fault. Yuna pulled up one of the nearby stools, taking a seat on it, crossing one leg over the other. Seymour sat quietly on the bed, pondering his first question. 

“...Why am I here?”

“Philosophical, aren’t we?”

Seymour raised an eyebrow in response and Yuna smiled, again, just slightly. Just to herself.

“Apologies, just… A little joke, I suppose. You’re here because Sin is here. You’re here because… Something has gone wrong.”  
He knew something was off, clearly, but Sin? He could still remember his last moments. And he could still remember, even when his body was nothing but the whisper of consciousness in the Farplane, the echo that rippled as Sin was finally destroyed. 

“...How? Why?”

“We’re not quite sure. But you’re not the first, and you will not be the last, I imagine. It’s just unfortunate that it had to be… You at all, really.”

Seymour chuckled softly to himself.

“The feeling is mutual. Believe me.”

He meant it. He would have been happier gone from this world. The next best thing to watching his goals crumble around him was to be released from the responsibility of it all. And yet, here he was, once more. Perhaps this was some kind of horrible retribution. 

No, that would be for someone that felt more regret than he did. 

“And some of them… They don’t return… Properly. Or, they do for a little while, and then they get Pyresickness.”

“Which is…?”

“Oh! We first started seeing it around seven years ago. Those who are revived, most of them are fine, but some of them… After around six weeks, they become ill. They become irrational. They mutate, they become… Horrific fiends. They attract other fiends… Like beacons. Other Pyresick flock to them, and any nearby fiends will as well. But that’s not the worst of it. They… Amalgamate. Into horrors. Like Sin itself, on a smaller scale. We’ve only seen it five times, but… Each was devastating. Luca was almost completely destroyed.”

Seymour sat quietly, as did Yuna. It was a lot to take in. Again, even in everything he’d seen, everything he’d read… This was something else. But that wasn’t new. Sin had been becoming more erratic in the leadup to its demise. Appearing more often, bringing with it fiends in greater numbers.

For years, before his own death, the Farplane had begun to have a particular stench. In his youth, he’d recalled the Farplane smelled sweet. Like rain, heavy and dense, underlaid by a scent he couldn’t place, but could only describe as ‘warm’. 

When he returned from exile though it began to stink. Like decay. Like meat. Like the stench of death off of the sick. The Farplane was dying, and every Guado knew it, but they all said nothing. Perhaps they felt they’d failed. Perhaps it was their pride.   
But, above all, he had encouraged it. The less that was said the better. That scent of death fueled him, reminded him why this cycle needed to end. 

“...I see. How long has it been since I…”

“Since I sent you? Twelve years. 

He nodded. It made sense when he’d first seen them. It was obvious time had passed, but that much? A lot can happen in twelve years. The mature woman standing in front of him, and that stench of death lingering even outside of Guadosalam, reminded him of that.

“So I suppose the only other thing I wish to know for the moment, is… What do you plan to do about it?”

“I… I’ve tried. Believe me. I’ve been trying for years, but… I have other responsibilities now. For the first time, we’re unified as a people. I can’t risk losing that. Sin is stronger now. I’ve fought so hard already we all have. We all continue to.”

“So you’re a politician now, Lad-- Yuna. Just Yuna,” he said it with a wry smile. Though it made sense. The hero of Spira, uniting the people after the defeat of Sin. It was a talent of hers. 

“In a way, I suppose,” she replied without missing a beat. She knew what he was trying to do. Trying to subtly re-establish himself in their conversation, but she refused to allow it. “But I’m more than that. Don’t take me for conceited, I’ve just… Learned a lot about self respect. And I’ve learned there’s only so much I can do by myself.”

She remained stoic, while he did his best to appear relaxed. Though that was difficult with dried blood spotting his face and hands. 

“Well. I suppose with you, though, I have options. I have leverage with the Guado people. They’ve shut us out, and… I can’t disrespect them. It’s their land, the Farplane is their right, but… It worries me. I need to get in there, I haven’t had a way until now.”

“Ah, I see. As much as I disgust you, I’m still useful as a bargaining chip.”

“Basically.”

He laughed, louder this time, smiling at her. “My, how you’ve changed. You used to be… Well. Meek, I suppose, I would have said. You’ve spent too much time with that cousin of yours, haven’t you?”

“I’ve run an entire nation for… A long time now, Seymour. A figurehead I may be at this point, what I say still holds weight.  
He wasn’t sure what to say. He had been in a very similar position once, if only for a short time, but for years? A lot could change. 

Before he could talk, the speaker in the corner of the room crackled to life.

“Arrival in a little under half an hour, Yuna.” The heavily accented Al Bhed pilot continued, “So uh. Tray tables up ‘n’ all that.” A pause, as though for a laugh. “Seriously though. Rikku lost a tooth last time, blood is hard to get out.”

The speaker crackled again and turned off. Yuna’s attention returned back to Seymour instantly.

“Alright. We can talk more once we’re on the ground. It will be… A long trip. And you’re going to need to do something about your hair.”


End file.
